Visit Chernobyl without leaving home! Chernobyl VR Project is a unique project by The Farm 51, as it combines video games with educational and movie narrative software. It is the very first virtual tour around the Chernobyl and Pripyat area, compatible with VR headsets.

抢先体验软件

随着软件的发展参与其中。

为何要采用抢先体验这种模式？

“As the whole VR in general and this project in specific - we still learn how to use (or how to shape) a new ways of mixing interactivity with storytelling. Chernobyl VR Project is highly experimental work: an ambitious attempt to blend large-scale photogrammetry 3D scanning with 360 stereoscopical movies and photos.

We spent more than one year on gathering and processing the materials from the hostile Restricted Zone, then developing the tools to work on interactive VR tour, then fighting with VR platforms technical limitations and realtime engine optimization.

Right now we got a good base to keep working on the subject, but the clock is, literally, ticking. Chernobyl zone is decaying, more and more objects are becoming unavailable. Soon (November 2016) the 4th Reactor - the one that exploded - will be covered and sealed for next 100 years with a huge construction called the New Safe Confinement and we won’t be able to grab any newer materials from the most interesting part of the Chernobyl’s history anymore.

We decided to release the app in Early Access mode because we need to get the feedback from the virtual explorers, finetune the experimental interfaces, optimize the unique way of displaying scans with spherical movies and to be able to organize next trips to the Chernobyl to gather much more content before it’s out of our reach in the future.

At top of it, the Unreal Engine 4 from Epic Games that we’re using for this application is still developing it’s final functionalities for the VR content display - so we’ll be increasing the performance and resolution of the in-app visuals thanks to following engine updates in next few months.”

这款软件的抢先体验状态大约持续多久？

“Early Access is planned until we got all interesting materials from Chernobyl scanned, filmed and processed, what should end in early spring 2017.”

计划中的完整版本和抢先体验版本到底有多少不同？

“The full version of the app should include:

more 3D scanned and interactive locations from Chernobyl and Pripyat for free roaming

extra content showing the end phase of building the New Safe Confinement - a unique construction that is supposed to cover the Chernobyl’s reactor for next 100 years

抢先体验版本的现状如何？

“In Early Access you can take a tour in VR headset only. Currently on Steam platform we support only HTC Vive, but soon there will be an Oculus support via Steam.

Currently taking your virtual tour to Chernobyl you can visit 5 interactive locations - usually small areas of free movement - and 9 non-interactive locations based on spherical movies and photos. In some of the locations you explore the environment, in others you can watch the interviews with the victims of catastrophe or the people who explain the story behind the accident.

We plan to add bugfixes, improvements, optimizations and new content parts in following patches, hopefully at least once per every month.”

在抢先体验期间和结束之后，这款软件的价格会有所不同吗？

“We don’t plan to increase the final price after we leave Early Access.”

在开发过程中，你们是如何计划让玩家社区参与进来的？

“We’d like to involve the community to help us shape the interface, optimization and smoothness of experience. As we still learn how to find a best way of bringing emotions with VR, we will listen to feedback from Steam forum dedicated to Early Access for ChernobylVR. We hope to discuss controls, performance issues, VR-related parts of experience and we’ll try to be as active as the users on both discussing and implementing the feedback results into the application.”

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关于这款软件

At The Farm 51, we believe that Virtual Reality (VR) is not only about entertainment. It is a fast developing technology which can serve as an excellent tool also when it comes to addressing important social issues. It is specifically with this aspect of VR in mind that we are developing the innovative application Chernobyl VR Project. It is the very first virtual tour around the Chernobyl and Pripyat area, compatible with multiple VR headsets.

We decided that this should not be a simply commercial project. We aimed to reach the people, for whom the disaster had an intimate, private, and sometimes family aspect to it. We met lots of people who had been near Chernobyl when the disaster happened, including the so called liquidators, who helped clean up the disaster site, often at the price of acute radiation sickness. We also managed to reach very famous people willing to support our project, among others the Nobel Prize winner Svetlana Alexievich (author of Chernobyl Prayer) and the legendary boxer Vitali Klitschko, now Mayor of Kiev).

However, the most important decision is the declaration of donating part of the proceeds from the sales of the Chernobyl VR Project to foundations helping the victims of the disaster. In association with the Polish-Ukrainian Open Dialog Foundation, we will select organizations to provide support to. In doing so, we hope that we contribute to helping the victims, and that the initiative will give our project another educational and social dimension.

Chernobyl VR Project began with the simple plan of bringing people into the Exclusion Zone, but over time it has grown into something much more personal as we find new stories to be told and places to be explored. This is not the end of Chernobyl VR Project. Plans are already in place to visit the area again to collect even more footage and bring more of the area's history to life later this year.